DRM Jams the Gears of War

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

The Microsoft published Epic Studios game, Gears of War, is now unplayable to all purchasers, due to its DRM.

The DRM in question involves a certificate with a hardcoded date – January 28 2009 – as its time to expire. Now that this certificate has expired the game will not load, giving the following error message.

[installpath]\Gears of War\Binaries\wargame-g4wlive.exe: You cannot run the game with modified executable code. Please reinstall the game

Of course, reinstallation does nothing, as the certificate has still expired. Of greater interest is why there is a certificate with expiration date in the game at all, especially as it’s expired just 15 months after the games release.

In the meantime, those of you that wish to play can do so by setting your system date back to January 27 or earlier.

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/drm-jams-the-ge ... ar-090130/

Wow, that sure is fun. An anti-piracy measure is forcing all gamers to put down a great game. Makes you wonder, how many other games made by microsoft have a date for them to quit working? I can see this being used to force gamers to buy newer versions of games in the future, unless that is, pirates manage to crack it -😉-

So, for all you legit guys out there, the ones that have never pirated, and refuse to, what now?

 

[Mr. Bond]

This isn't right for Microsoft to do but that doesn't mean that because of it you should steal your games/media from know on.

DRM in my opinion is a bad idea (glad iTunes did away with it), but I'm not saying pirate it instead..

Just a note: It's because of people stealing/pirating copyrighted media that companies have to come up with things like this (no matter how ethical/unethical they are) to protect their copyright, and in the end, you'll just download a cracked version that probably has a virus and the people that actually paid for it get screwed.

 

[Ascent]

What a shame.

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

This isn't right for Microsoft to do but that doesn't mean that because of it you should steal your games/media from know on.

DRM in my opinion is a bad idea (glad iTunes did away with it), but I'm not saying pirate it instead..

Just a note: It's because of people stealing/pirating copyrighted media that companies have to come up with things like this (no matter how ethical/unethical they are) to protect their copyright, and in the end, you'll just download a cracked version that probably has a virus and the people that actually paid for it get screwed.

Thats my point exactly! This is why we need to stop companies like Microsoft from producing the games we play, and we need to move toward open source developers.

Right now, you have games like these released by major companies. You then have forums made for talking about the game, cheat codes, ect. What we NEED is a game made by a developing team, who also run the forum for that game. Direct feedback from the people who matter! Release it as beta, and youll have more people reporting bugs and things than microsoft would be willing to pay test for them.

In the end, open source games are much better. That doesnt mean that companies like Microsoft have to die out of the gaming field, they can make and sell the devices the games can be played on, in other words, sell the XBox, but open it up for homebrew! Thats what we need, and thats what I aim to help get done by teaming up with a few selcted members of the leading piracy groups and forming the Society for Sharing.

Our goal is simple, do away with the copyright system, and help benifit us all. In this case, the company, the delevelopers, and the end user all win. With DRM, everyone loses. You have proven my point, thank you -D-